Kidney for Sale by Owner

Human Organs, Transplantation, and the Market

Publication Year: 2005

Over the past decade in the United States, nearly 6,000 people a year have died waiting for organ transplants. In 2003 alone, only 20,000 out of the 83,000 waiting for transplants received them--in anyone's eyes, a tragedy. Many of these deaths could have

Cover

Title Page, Copyright

Contents

Acknowledgments

Throughout the writing of this manuscript, I benefited from numerous discussions
and commentaries concerning various ancestral versions. I am in the debt
of many for their critical comments and useful suggestions. In particular, this volume
profited from my conversations with H. Tristram Engelhardt Jr., Baruch A.
Brody, George Sher, and Gerald...

Introduction

In the United States, more than 44,308 patients died while waiting for organ
transplants from 1992 through 2001.1 An additional 6,385 patients died in 2002,
and 6,509 in 2003.2 Many others endured painful, life-sustaining measures, while
queuing for available organs. Despite the significant potential of commercialization
to increase the efficiency and effectiveness...

This study addresses a cluster of conceptually independent philosophical concerns.
They are related by an urgent public health challenge: the considerable
disparity between the number of patients who could significantly benefit from
organ transplantation and the number of human organs available for transplant.
In August 2004, more than 86,000 patients...

CHAPTER TWO. Metaphysics, Morality,
and Political Theory:
The Presuppositions of Proscription Reexamined

Before forming blanket moral judgments whether to condemn or praise, before
even considering likely costs and benefits, one must assess what would have to
be granted regarding the relationship of persons with their bodies, the ownership
of body parts, and the limits of societal and governmental authority for the sale
of human organs for transplantation to be morally permissible. Critical assessment
of such commercialization must begin...

CHAPTER THREE. A Market in Human Organs:
Costs and Benefits, Vices and Virtues

The previous chapter assessed understandings of embodiment, property, and political
authority under which a market in human organs would, all things considered,
be morally permissible. These necessary and sufficient conditions were assessed by
exploring the relationship between persons and their bodies, the senses in which
organs can be property, the distinction...

CHAPTER FOUR.The Body, Its Parts,
and the Market:
Revisionist Interpretations
from the History of Philosophy

The previous chapters had two goals: on the one hand, to assess what understandings
of embodiment, body ownership, and political authority would have to
be granted for a market in human organs, all things being equal, to be morally
permissible; and, on the other hand, to assess the costs and benefits that challenge
such a ceteris paribus finding, thereby rendering a market in human organs
more or less plausible. The advantages and...

CHAPTER FIVE. Prohibition:
More Harm Than Benefit?

As a field of inquiry, Western bioethics aspires to an international political
stage. Bioethicists almost inevitably lay claim to a universal account of morality,
and professional moral deportment, including the purported foundations of law
and public policy, as well as the moral authority for national law and international
treaty to guide and hopefully guarantee uniformity of practice. Its claims
are framed as assertions or discoveries...

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